


the kits are alright

by casualbird



Series: ukatake wk 2021 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elementary School, Attempt at Humor, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, kids being kids, what on earth are these kids up to. what is a warrior cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28555407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: which treats of karasuno elementary's own warrior cat kid conclave, their exhausted playground monitor, and the convenience store employee who, against all odds, is beginning to love them.
Relationships: Takeda Ittetsu/Ukai Keishin
Series: ukatake wk 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092188
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38
Collections: UkaTake Week 2021





	the kits are alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [birthday danny!!!](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=birthday+danny%21%21%21).



> do enjoy! and if your name is danny, enjoy extra because you are my treasured friend!

Ukai hasn’t got the slightest damn idea what the kids are on about. It’s all high-drama gibberish, all _hurry up, Dewdrop, we gotta get **revenge**_ and _mm-mm, Firepaw, we’ve got to move slowly since Crowstar lost a life._

Firepaw--he thinks the kid’s name is Hinata?--looks penitent, hangdog. He nods to Dewdrop, drags his feet in the dust.

Ukai doesn’t know Dewdrop’s name, because the playground monitor never scolds her. She’s a dark-haired little girl, glasses, looking too sensible to play this intricate, frankly bonkers game.

A rangy skinned-knee boy turns, calls Hinata something--mouse-brain? It sounds rude.

“Crowstar,” Hinata wheedles, gesturing broadly. “Sharppaw’s being _mean_ again, and ‘cause of the warrior code I can’t even beat him up!”

Crowstar’s the stocky kid, the one who hangs back with the almost-convincing false limp. “Sharppaw,” he warns, and skinned-knees whirls back around and _hisses._

And yep! there’s the playground monitor, jogging awkward on their tail. “Kageyama-kun,” he implores, “we’ve _talked_ about this.” Ukai takes a second to snicker into his Shonen Jump before he realizes that the whole motley crew of them have ventured square into the center of the empty lot behind the store.

He should very much disapprove of this. There was never any of this fol-de-rol when Ukai was a kid, anyway. You played Power Rangers or you played four-square, or tag, or sardines if you were feeling spicy.

They’re going to weird out his customers.

Well. It’s, like, eleven-thirty on a Tuesday. He doesn’t have any customers. Hell, he’s not even in the store--just sitting out back, where a smoke break’s turned into a nice leisurely avoidance of all his worldly duty.

He should grouse at them anyway. Like the old man, tell ‘em to _git!_ It’s Ukai family policy.

He doesn’t--just watches as the playground monitor strafes around them like a shepherd, chirping laughter, little scoldings.

The kids call him Take-chan, so Ukai does too. Not to his face or anything, just…when he sees him, chasing after his little gaggle of strange troublemakers, glasses gone askew on that round face.

Take-chan halts for a second. Turns, waves frenetic at him, flashes him that _everything’s-in-hand_ grin.

Ukai’s insides can barely stand it. For a second it’s like New Year’s Eve in there, all half-drunk pyrotechnics.

And then Take-chan is _hollering_ to him, and he’s got to snap out of it quick before he makes more a fool of himself than those kids are, and damn, he’d really very much like another cigarette but he probably shouldn’t do that in front of such impressionable little _\--focus!_

“Hello!” he calls, somehow cheerful and beleaguered all at once, “I apologize, I’ll get them back where they’re supposed to be!”

“C’mon Take-chan,” huffs a boy with close-cropped hair, “this is our territory! We’ve got to defend it against EagleClan--we’ve gotta get ‘em back for what they did to Crowstar!”

Take-chan purses his lips, straightens to his full height. It’s not all that impressive, but the little squirts don’t know that. “You can avenge Crowstar on school grounds,” he says, as bright and curt as the November breeze. “You all know that trespassing is against the warrior code!”

Whatever the hell he said, it works. The kids turn like a riptide, hustling back for the playground at speed. A few of them wave.

Take-chan waves too.

Ukai returns the gesture, muted--like the little thank-you twitch, when someone lets him merge. It makes him feel like a fool and an asshole at once, and he isn’t even sure if Take-chan sees it.

He smokes a cigarette about it, forgets to tap the ash. The cinders of it fall onto his apron, and he forgets to sweep them away. Just peers in through the back door, craning his neck for customers that aren’t there, stiffening against the flickering urge to watch for that green jacket.

He’s found some semblance of peace when he hears the pitter-patter of little paws again. Looks up to find the brats have slipped their custodian, made their way back to the land that’s rightfully theirs. Or whatever. It’s the little boy, again, probably-Hinata, and his mortal frenemy Sharppaw-Kageyama, and then also the even littler boy. Thunderstorm, the kids supply, and Ukai forgets it in an instant.

They’re all scrawny anyway, small for what Ukai _guesses_ is their age. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand kids. He’s pretty sure these are, like, eight to ten, and they’ve got some big kid teeth, and they can probably read okay. No word yet on the times tables.

“C’mon, Sharppaw! Thunderstorm’s gonna teach us some cool battle moves so we can show EagleClan who’s boss!”

Little Kageyama folds his arms, tries to look older. The snot dripping from his nose kind of ruins the effect, but he makes as good a fist of it as he can.

“You,” he snipes, “are just gonna slow us down. You fight like a _kittypet._ ” This, Ukai gathers from the thumbtacks in his tone, is a vicious insult.

Hinata takes it like one. He leaps for Kageyama, baby teeth bared and snarling “your _dad_ fights like a kittypet!” The smallest one--Thunderstorm--is eager to follow, and soon they’re all a yowling blur, laughing and growling and striking out with bared-claw fingers.

None of it makes contact, though, and Ukai remembers his own play fights. Wonders how long it took Take-chan to teach them how not to beat the devil out of each other.

Ukai laughs--cheers, even, if only silently. It really is kind of like Power Rangers, so maybe the kids are alright.

And then his watch is over, because Take-chan is back, and--Ukai purses his lips. _His watch,_ as if someone told him to look in on them. He huffs, turns back to his manga.

Finds that he absolutely, fully cannot focus on his manga, because Take-chan is chiding again, asking _how many times have we talked about this_ and _what on Earth am I going to do with all of you?_

It’s affectionate--sweet, almost, but there’s shades of a hardass in there. _Good for him,_ thinks Ukai, and sneaks a smile behind his magazine.

And then the recess bell goes, and the kids all pule and bitch and moan for a second, trudging, dragging little sneakered feet.

Hinata waves at him, again, and he’s almost willing to admit it’s cute. Well, he would, he just doesn’t get through the thought because as soon as Take-chan’s made sure that nobody’s about to revolt, he starts _walking towards Ukai._

And when did this become such an opera? Sheesh, it’s worse than the kids’ game, all life and death, all strident struggle. God help him, god help him, he is so gay it’s obtrusive, like a toothache, and--

\--And Take-chan is chattering, smile going off like a sparkler, and Ukai panics. Slams Shonen Jump shut without marking the page, scrambles fingers through his hair and winds up looking _dumb._

If Take-chan minds, he doesn’t look it. Just cocks his cheerful head, extends one little hand to shake. Ukai jolts to his feet, takes it. Take-chan’s fingertips are chilly with autumn and he shakes like he’s trying to sell a used car, but it’s--his hands... he’s soft.

“You’re Ukai-san, right? This is your shop? I wanted to apologize,” he begins, and as genuinely apologetic as it sounds there is still that lilt in it. Ukai thrills, a little, to hear it up close. “I don’t know what I can do to keep those little scamps off your property, but I’d better figure it out quick, huh?” He chews his lip a little, darts that pudgy hand back like a rabbit to its warren.

“Before they mess with business, I mean.”

It’s sensible. It’s Ukai family policy.

He’s never been smart enough to really go in for that shit. Especially not now, confronted with that million-dollar grin.

Ukai’s voice cracks saying _naaaaaaaah,_ anyway, for reasons that are both obvious and utterly beyond his reach. 

“They look like they’re havin’ fun,” he says, “though I can’t say what in hell they’re doing.”

His voice breaks again, coming out in little shards that match his ragged blush. “Oh. Sorry.”

But Take-chan just smiles, as blithe and doggedly sweet as he is with the kids. “You’re fine,” he insists, and somehow it feels very, very true. “They’re a whole handful, I know. I’ll try to keep them where they belong.”

Ukai can’t believe he’s about to say “s’okay,” but he does, just like that. “No sweat off my back, I don’t see any customers this time of day anyway.”

“I-if it’ll make your job easier, uh, Sensei, that’s fine.”

It hadn’t seemed like it was possible for Take-chan to smile even harder, but he does, cheeks dimpling, _fuck._

“Takeda,” he bleats. “I’m Takeda. And I’m grateful. Really. I’ll do my best but if it’s not the end of the world I guess sometimes--they just love that game of theirs so much, they’re pretending like they’re warrior cats? It’s darling.”

 _Warrior cats,_ he says, as if this is helpful whatsoever. Well--it _sounds_ about right, for all their caterwauling, but Ukai--

“Warrior cats.”

“Oh, they’re these books,” Takeda says, as light as the autumn breeze. He rummages a second in his messenger bag, past all the first aid kits and walkie-talkies, until he produces a pristine paperback. “About these cats who live in the forest, and they’ve got this whole code of honor, and they get into all kinds of pitched battles--it’s a little bloody, I think, but it keeps them creative, keeps them reading.”

“They aren’t bad books,” he adds, and holds the thing out. Both hands, like it’s an occasion. It feels like one.

Ukai is sure that he’s supposed to be so, so weirded out by now. And he is, kind of. It’s weird in the way that a second drink from the vending machine is weird, some wadded cash in an old pocket.

He takes that book in his hands, pulpy as it is. It can’t be worse than Shonen Jump, if the kids like it so much.

Ukai nods, and as quick as he’d come on Takeda’s gone, calling goodbyes and waving over his shoulder, making shockingly fast for the school. He doesn’t give Ukai a chance to refuse the book.

“Be my guest,” Takeda practically sings, “it’s for when business is slow. Riveting stuff, really, even if you know exactly who the killer is the entire time.”

He doesn’t even really want to.

 _Fuck,_ he grits to himself, _fuck, sonofabitch I’m in too deep._

He knows he’s gonna end up reading the damn book, too.

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea if warrior cats was ever popular in japan the way it was here, with kids forming their own little clans and all, but quite frankly it's my fanfiction and i am allowed to create its reality as i see fit.
> 
> for anyone wondering, hinata and kageyama's warrior names are going to be firefly and sharptongue respectively. yes i spent a lot of time on this.
> 
> anyway. do let me know what you thought of this, because this fic is kind of an odd duck for me and just. generally, but if you enjoyed, come hang out with me on [twitter (18+)](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles)
> 
> stay tuned for the rest of ukatake week! i think i've really outdone myself this time, ehehe...
> 
> much love!!!  
> -mye


End file.
